Hacker News Reader

retromarioon U.S. sanctions against the A/I Collective

Colinizers?

retromarioon Canada will match US tariffs 'dollar for dollar' as trade talks break down

Canada has government-rune liquor stores, they're doing ok. Not exactly a "grocery store", but still PRETTY SHOCKING. UK has co-op (chains). There's Mondragon in Spain - I know it's employee-owned but that's not much different than government-owned if you really think about it.

Public-transit where I live is not free, but it is subsidized, with various recent efforts from municipal and state governments to further reduce costs for all residents.

Germany is defined as Social Democracy or a Social Market Economy. It marries free-market capitalism with social welfare policies, state regulation, and collective bargaining to ensure economic growth and social security, including robust social safety nets.

The US once had stronger unions and basic worker-oriented safety nets. This has been dismantled since the 80s, while piling on the National Debt by pilfering the treasury and "returning" the money to the (rich) end of the tax base.

There was a great quote in the original Deus Ex: "In 1945, corporations paid 50 percent of federal taxes. Now they pay about 5 percent."

In my mind the DSA is trying to shift the Overton window towards something more reasonable, that has already existed in the US. Focusing on the extremes to dismiss the DSA entirely is like throwing the baby out with the bath water.

retromarioon Bun support is now limited and deprecated

In the past 18 months I've seen experienced developers turn out incredible work using llm-assisted tools, over and over again. With the right harnesses, processes and result-oriented testing, you can simply produce so much more high-quality work.

I know it's anecdotal, but I have so much data from my own experiences and those of my peers that I know these new tools are here to stay. It also makes me believe that those studies are either flawed or out of date.

retromarioon Asian governments roll out 4-day weeks, WFH to solve fuel crisis caused by war

How do you define "Western people"?

retromarioon How long before superintelligence? (1997)

It triggers me that there's an obvious typo in 'Oxford' right under the author's name. I wonder if it was originally published like that since 1997 and never caught or changed with all the updates.

retromarioon Small German town starts testing geothermal power utilizing new techniques

Geretsried (the town) apparently sits in an ideal location for geothermal power and heat plants, in the same basin as Munich and other surrounding municipalities who have been leveraging geothermal energy to great effect.

https://geothermie-allianz.de/en/geothermal-in-bavaria/

I'm surprised we don't see more such projects.

retromarioon Microsoft bets on Germany in €3.2B AI push

I'm not OP, just explaining how public and private investments are sometimes linked.

retromarioon Microsoft bets on Germany in €3.2B AI push

Some projects are a mix of private and public investments. A freeze on the public portion affects the risk/trade-offs of the private investment portion and therefore on the overall project.

retromarioon Losing my son

Every human being is born with zero ability for self-preservation...

retromarioon Bret Victor update

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bret_Victor

retromarioon The Tesla Semi cab from the practical POV of someone who drives trucks

What about the 4 examples of other electric semis shared at the end of the original thread?

https://twitter.com/TOrynski/status/1600970796159336449

retromarioon Apple blocks Coinbase Wallet

https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/17/yeah-apples-m1-macbook-pro...

2-3x more energy efficient + the same performance (if not better) than other (Intel) chips ~2 times more expensive. I don't think there's been another leap like that in the last 20-25 years.

retromarioon Russians are trying to flee – data from Google Trends

I think it's only a matter of time until the US and Germany stop buying gas from Russia. It's going to cause a lot of pain, especially for us in Germany where nearly a third of gas is imported from Russia. But that's the point, there are no more easy ways to put pressure on Putin. We are all going to feel a lot of pain before things get better.

What is happening to the Russian people is tragic, but it pales in comparison to what the average Ukrainian is experiencing (shortages of food, medicine, water and basic shelter, psychological terror, maimings, deaths).

We have no other means to put pressure on Putin save arming Ukraine or attacking Russia.

retromarioon Germany locks down unvaccinated people, as leaders plan to make shots compulsory

Uh, Germany locked down pretty hard, several times. "Good" organisation and mass testing came later.

Source: my last two years with three kids at home

retromarioon North Carolina tells retired engineer he can't talk about engineering

The other points are fine, but a 3 or 4-year old does not understand nuance or personal responsibility. I think that in general German society encourages a strong sense of personality responsibility as part of developing healthy children and adults, so kind of a weird thing to pick on.

Personally I jaywalk when it's safe and no kids are around.

retromarioon Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

https://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/31872/people-with-migra...

A few examples as well as general recent trends but also the challenges immigrant founders are facing.

retromarioon Numi – Calculator app for Mac

Do you have a source for this?

retromarioon Letters from House members to cable providers [pdf]

> None of those deaths were linked back to the Capital building in a meaningful way (including the officer).

That is simply false.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/police-of...

retromarioon WhatsApp to move ahead with privacy update despite backlash

How does the Matrix experience compare to Signal, feature-wise? I ran into similar frustrations with Signal's lack of polish in certain areas when trying to move family over.

There's something to be said for why WhatsApp is so popular, it feels like the most full-featured and polished communications app.

retromarioon Israeli study finds 94% drop in symptomatic Covid-19 cases with Pfizer vaccine

The EU messed up but they are at least publicly owning up to some of the blame (finally): https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/10/ursula-von-der...

retromarioon Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features

> eg, having a custom one-touch screen lock button that's always present

Do you know that clicking the TouchID button will lock your screen?

retromarioon YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

https://www.npr.org/2020/12/08/944230517/supreme-court-rejec...

retromarioon FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

Their thinking is pretty much all laid out in the 2015 Zuckerberg memo on VR/AR: https://twitter.com/lucasmtny/status/1095861887588229120?s=2...

retromarioon GFXBench: Apple M1

How does one disable the signature validation?

retromarioon Are we living at the 'hinge of history'?

My 99 year old grandma says that the greatest invention in her lifetime was the washing machine, freeing up an incredible number of labor and hours wasted every week in every household (and usually by women) for more productive tasks.

retromarioon Facebook halts Oculus Quest sales in Germany amid privacy concerns

I do think it's a level above the competition, thanks to their multi-year head start on the hardware-software integration (a la Apple) and their focus on VR comfort/quality. A year after it's launched, there's still no real competitor on the mass market side, just a few enterprise attempts (aka we haven't spent enough to get enough high-quality 3rd party content).

I think it might already be too late in terms of dominating.

retromarioon Facebook halts Oculus Quest sales in Germany amid privacy concerns

I haven't tried the Pico but the Vive Focus is not anywhere close to the experience of the Quest, especially when it comes to tracking.

The Quest stands out because the tracking is as accurate and consistent as on desktop class VR headsets. The software and user experience is a clear notch above any other standalone headset.

retromarioon LSD Chemist William Pickard to Be Released from Prison

Please read these and then decide who's at fault:

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/magazine/the-lawyer-who-b...

https://www.salon.com/2016/01/04/teflons_toxic_legacy_partne...

retromarioon India, Jio, and the Four Internets

A few examples which benefit citizens:

* Websites are required to clearly present what information they store and track. They are also required to provide an option of functionality without ad tracking technology. The UX problems have been discussed ad nauseam, but from a pure requirement, this is a net win for citizen's data privacy and data tracking transparency.

* Internet companies are required to report and delete all citizen's data on request. This is a huge win for citizen's control over their own data. While companies like Google had already started to become more transparent on the data they collect from their users even before GDPR, this specific law spurred a huge increase in functionality in order to meet the full requirements.

* The fact that it has forced major international companies to provide these data transparency and deletion features to all users is a net win for all, including non-European citizens.

* Companies (and government institutions) are required to publicly notify any breach of data within 72 hours.

retromarioon The FBI is secretly using Sabre as a global travel surveillance tool

They are few and far between, but there have been a couple efforts by some of the "leaders" above to stop some of the illegal domestic surveillance programs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Comey#NSA_domestic_wiret...